Exhibition | Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China
From the press release for the exhibition (7 March 2024) . . .
奪天工 Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, 14 September 2024 — 6 January 2025
A new exhibition at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens will explore the potential of gardens as spaces that not only delight the senses and nourish the body but also inspire the mind—both intellectually and spiritually. The literati during China’s Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties believed gardens resulted in more ethical connections to all living things. On view in the Chinese Garden’s Studio for Lodging the Mind from 14 September 2024 to 6 January 2025, 奪天工 Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China will exhibit 24 objects, including hanging scrolls, hand scrolls, albums, and books from The Huntington’s collections and those throughout the United States. The exhibition will also feature a participatory artwork by contemporary Chinese artist Zheng Bo that was commissioned by The Huntington.
Growing and Knowing and the Huntington exhibition Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis will run concurrently as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a regional event presented by Getty featuring more than 60 exhibitions and programs that explore the intersections of art and science, both past and present.
Growing and Knowing will present three key themes: ‘Growing’, ‘Knowing’, and ‘Being’.
Growing
The introductory section to the exhibition, ‘Growing’, will focus on historical horticultural practices in China, many of which are still practiced today. Chinese scholars and gardeners experimented with domestication, grafting, and hybridization to create unusual cultivars (new varieties of plants developed through human intervention). Throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, these techniques were well documented in horticultural manuals. Some of these books—such as The Secretly Transmitted Mirror of Flowers, completed by Chen Hao 陳淏 (1615–1703) in 1688—remained popular instructional guides in China into the 20th century. The well-known chrysanthemum flower exists as a result of hybridization experiments conducted by scholars and gardeners. Visitors will have the opportunity to view chrysanthemums in full bloom just outside of the exhibition walls in The Huntington’s Chinese Garden. Reproductions of gardening tools from the period will also be displayed.
Knowing
The second section, ‘Knowing’, will present a diverse selection of books and paintings from the Ming and Qing dynasties, showcasing the multiple ways that scholars thought about the plants they cultivated. “The works selected for ‘Knowing’ specifically highlight scholars’ understanding of plants as food, sources of emergency sustenance and pharmaceuticals, and keys to classical literature,” said exhibition curator Phillip E. Bloom, The Huntington’s June and Simon K.C. Li Curator of the Chinese Garden and Director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies. A subtheme of the section will touch on the era’s hierarchies of knowledge—specifically how scholars’ intellectual knowledge of plants was valued over gardeners’ direct, physical knowledge. Gardeners’ bodily insights were largely ignored in historical texts, but they were revealed in visual sources. For example, the Ming dynasty painting Garden for Solitary Pleasure (17th century) shows a scholar lying deep in thought among bamboo and other trees, as nearby laborers bend over plants and carry tools to cultivate the scholar’s garden.
Being
Chinese scholars did not grow and learn about plants just for knowledge’s sake. Growing and knowing were means for them to better understand their place in the world and learn to interact more ethically with other creatures. The last section of the exhibition, ‘Being’, will explore these practices of self-cultivation. “In order to truly understand how nature works, scholars not only contemplated plants but also engaged with and learned from them,” Bloom said. “Caring for plants, observing their habits, taking pleasure in their forms, and ultimately recognizing their commonalities with humans were, in essence, practices whereby people may perfect themselves.” Pursuits of a Scholar, an 18th-century Qing dynasty painting album, dedicates several leaves to the different ways that scholars interacted with plants. One leaf shows a scholar writing observations of a bamboo plant in his study, while another depicts a scholar caring for chrysanthemums.
Ecosensibility Exercise: Fragrant Eight-Section Brocade 生態感悟練習： 聞香八段錦 by Zheng Bo
To invite visitors to develop their own meaningful relationships with their natural surroundings, The Huntington has commissioned the participatory artwork Ecosensibility Exercise: Fragrant Eight-Section Brocade by Hong Kong–based artist Zheng Bo. Fragrant Eight-Section Brocade is inspired by the traditional Chinese mind-body practice qigong 氣功. Building on exercises that date back nearly 900 years and remain widely practiced today, Zheng’s work includes eight exercises that combine simple full-body movements and deep breathing to activate the mind and body. Each exercise is performed with a fragrant plant, encouraging the participants to develop a human-plant connection. Visitors to the exhibition can perform the exercises on their own throughout The Huntington’s gardens at marked stops chosen by the artist. A film documenting the eight exercises will be shown in the gallery. The Huntington is also planning a series of public programs in which the artist will guide visitors through his reinterpreted movements.
Exhibition Catalog
The Huntington will publish an open-access digital catalog edited by Phillip E. Bloom, Nicholas K. Menzies (research fellow in The Huntington’s Center for East Asian Garden Studies), and Michelle Bailey (assistant curator for the Center for East Asian Garden Studies). The book will include seven essays, 16 catalog entries by various scholars, and a conversation with artist Zheng Bo. A paperback version of the catalog will be available at the Huntington Store.
This exhibition is made possible with support from Getty through its PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative.
Call for Papers | A Legacy of Landscape Study
From ArtHist.net:
A Legacy of Landscape Study
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 5–6 December 2024
Proposals due by 1 July 2024
The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) and Oak Spring Garden Foundation (OSGF) share a legacy of landscape study rooted in the collections of Paul and Rachel Lambert ‘Bunny’ Mellon. While the Mellons’ collecting practices differed, they both gathered significant materials in the history of British environments, horticulture, and landscapes. Notable examples include Paul Mellon’s paintings and prints by George Stubbs and J. M. W. Turner and Bunny Mellon’s garden treatises and Humphrey Repton Red Books. From these origins, the YCBA’s extensive collection of British art has encouraged generations of new scholarship on British landscape art, while OSGF has become a leading research institution for the global histories and futures of gardens, landscapes, and plants. Inspired by this legacy of collecting and scholarship, the YCBA and OSGF are hosting a symposium at Yale to bring together new interdisciplinary research on British landscape studies.
By commingling the diversity of approaches to the histories and depictions of landscapes and environments represented by the two institutions, this symposium aims to generate new scholarly conversation about the intersections of British culture, ecology, and land. We invite papers exploring new topics in the study of British landscapes, from art history to cultural geography to environmental studies, and we particularly welcome work exploring the relationship of cultural output to physical landscapes and ecologies. We encourage broad definitions of ‘landscape’ and ‘British’ to open the potential for discussions of the global context of Britain and its former empire, and to consider an international exchange of landscape art, design, and horticulture.
Proposed subjects might include, but are not limited to:
• Extractive, industrial, urban, and neglected landscapes
• Histories of collecting and display (whether art or plants)
• Interconnections of landscape and garden history and art history
• New critical approaches to environments, landscapes, and British identity
• Plant history and humanities broadly, including related subjects such as food history and agrarian history
Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words and a short biography by 1 July 2024, 5pm (ET). The YCBA will provide travel and accommodations for successful applicants.
Call for Papers | The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain
From ArtHist.net:
The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, 27–28 September 2024
Proposals due by 31 May 2024
This summer, Pallant House Gallery presents The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain (11 May – 20 October), a major exhibition exploring the continuing and fundamental relevance of the genre of still life to British art and art history. Historically still life has been viewed as the lowest genre of art, but in fact it has been employed by leading British artists to grapple with some of the most profound themes relating to the human condition, and as a vehicle for experimentation with new forms and ideas. In keeping with Pallant House Gallery’s mission to explore new perspectives on British art from 1900 to now, the exhibition demonstrates how artists working in the 20th and 21st centuries have continually reimagined traditional still life. It questions how still life has been used to explore themes such as mortality and loss, fecundity and love, the uncanny and subconscious, the domestic environment and questions of gender, abundance and waste. Today these themes also extend to climate change and to the legacy of colonialism and empire.
Starting with the introduction of still life in Britain by émigré artists in the 17th century, the exhibition reveals how modern and contemporary artists have engaged with and reinterpreted traditional art history. It then presents a history of modern and contemporary British art as understood through the lens of the still life, showing how the genre sits at the heart of groups and movements including the Bloomsbury Group, Scottish Colourists, Seven & Five Society, Unit One, Surrealism, St Ives and post-war abstraction, Neo-romanticism, pop art, post-war figurative art, conceptual art, and the YBAs. Encompassing painting, prints, photography, sculpture, and installation, The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain includes over 150 works by more than 100 leading artists working in Britain. The exhibition is accompanied by a site-specific installation by Phoebe Cummings.
This symposium will seek to draw out connections between historic and contemporary art, and will provide an opportunity to further explore key themes in the exhibition. The keynote lecture will be delivered by a leading British artist. The two sessions will include papers by art historians and curators concerning artists and themes in historic, modern, and contemporary British art, and artists talking about themes in their work.
We seek contributions that investigate, though are not limited to:
• the reinterpretation and renewal of this traditional genre
• the exploration of gender identity through still life
• how the world’s underlying uncertainties are expressed through a genre traditionally perceived as domestic
• still life as an art form that goes beyond reality to explore symbolism, the sub-conscious, and the uncanny
• the connections between still life and global commerce and its connections to colonialism and the British Empire
• the contribution of émigré and Diaspora artists to the enduring significance of the genre
• still life as a site for the exploration of materiality
To be considered as a speaker, please send an abstract of up to 400 words to curatorial@pallant.org.uk, including your name, affiliation, contact details (phone number and email address), and a short biography with details of any recent publications. The deadline for submissions is 31 May 2024 (12pm). We will aim to contact successful candidates by Monday, 1 July.
The symposium has been generously supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Speakers will be paid a fee of £150. Speakers will be able to claim travel expenses (up to £100) and accommodation costs (up to £100) for the Friday evening. There will be no delegate fee for speakers. Delegate tickets will be £50 full price (£30 for students) and will include refreshments and lunch. Tickets will go on sale via the Pallant House Gallery website nearer the time of the conference.
Workshop | Collecting, Growing, and Exploring
From ArtHist.net:
Collecting, Growing, and Exploring in Early Modernity
EPHE Sorbonne, Paris 11 June 2024
Organized by Maddalena Bellavitis and Catherine Powell-Warren
Registration due by 6 June 2024
The last few decades have produced a number of studies devoted to the relationship between collecting and science, highlighting the relationship between a growing interest in botany and the fascination with the collection of naturalia, especially from the mid-sixteenth century onward. These objects of natural origins aroused the admiration of enthusiasts and scientists alike. Underexplored, however, is the extent to which collecting and scientific experimentation and exploration were related in the early modern period. Thus, this workshop aims to focus attention on the collections of naturalia, on the one hand, and on the attempts to grow exotic plants in Europe and the adventurous journeys that the search for tropical plants and animals they encouraged, on the other. To be included in the list of participants, please send an email to maddalena.bellavitis@gmail.com.
p r o g r a m m e
10.00 Morning Session
• Maddalena Bellavitis (Saprat, EPHE) and Catherine Powell-Warren (Ghent University/FWO) — Welcome and Introductions
• Marie Bigotte (Durham University) — Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Princely Garden Collections of Naturalia
• Madeline White (University of Oxford) — ‘Indian Maiz…in my Garden at Mitcham’: Global Networks, Local Gardens, and Oxford’s du Bois Herbarium
• Baijayanti Chatterjee (University of Calcutta) — The Foundation and Growth of the Calcutta Botanical Garden: Plant Collecting and Botanical Science under the East India Company, 1786–1815
• Anil Paralkar (Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Ruprech-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, WittenLab, Witten/Herdecke University) — The Datura in Gottorf: Botanizing, Ethnographing, and Imagining India in 17th-Century Germany
13.30 Lunch
15.00 Afternoon Session
• Seán Thomas Kane (Binghamton University) — Cosmographic Singularities: André Thevet as a Collector of American Exotica, 1556–1590
• India Cole (Queen Mary University of London) — The Duchess of Beaufort’s Pioneering Collections
• Silvia Papini (Università di Firenze – Pisa – Siena) — Exploring Nature in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany: Mercantile Perspectives in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries
• Celia Rodriguez Tejuca (Johns Hopkins University) — Stabilizing Materials across Time and Space: A Natural History Cabinet in 18th-Century Havana
17.15 Discussion and Conclusions
Exhibition | Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art
Opening in November at the Alte Pinakothek:
Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), Nature into Art
Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 26 November 2024 — 16 March 2025
Toledo Museum of Art, 12 April — 27 July 2025
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 23 August — 7 December 2025
Rachel Ruysch, Blumenstrauß / Bouquet of Flowers, 1715 (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek München, 878).
Rachel Ruysch’s deceptively realistic floral still lifes—paintings of exotic plants and fruit, butterflies and insects—were already sought-after and expensive collector’s items during the artist’s lifetime. Demand was so great that the Amsterdam painter could afford to produce merely a few works a year.
As the daughter of the renowned professor of anatomy and botany Frederik Ruysch, the first female member of The Hague’s Confrerie Pictura, a court painter in Düsseldorf, a lottery game winner, and the mother of eleven children, Rachel was an exceptional figure. In November, the Alte Pinakothek will open the world’s first major monographic exhibition of her work. Discover the wondrous world of Rachel Ruysch, who between art and science perfected fine painting and artistic freedom amidst illustrious patrons in Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, and Florence.
Symposium | Angelica Kauffman
Angelica Kauffman, Self-portrait with Bust of Minerva, detail, ca. 1780–84, oil on canvas, 93 × 76 cm
(Chur: Grisons Museum of Fine Arts, on deposit from the Gottfried Keller Foundation, Federal Office of Culture, Bern)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the Royal Academy:
Angelica Kauffman
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 7 June 2024
As part of the Royal Academy’s retrospective exhibition of the work of Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807), this one-day symposium will provide an in-depth look at the work of one of the RA’s founding members. Known for her society portraits and pioneering history paintings, Kauffman painted some of the most influential figures of her day—queens, countesses, actors, and socialites. Her history paintings often focused on female protagonists from classical history and mythology. Organised in partnership with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, this symposium will address Kauffman’s international career and her time in London, her inspirations and subjects, and her place in the art world at the time and her position now in the broader context of art history.
Speakers include Emma Barker, Rosalind Polly Blakesley, Bettina Baumgartel, Rebecca Cypess, Ellen Hanspach-Bernal, Yuriko Jackall, Chi-Chi Nwanoku, Wendy Wassyng Roworth, Jane Simpkiss, and Annette Wickham. The day will conclude with a special artist in-conversation between Sutapa Biswas and Griselda Pollock.
If you have any accessibility needs, please contact public.programmes@royalacademy.org.uk.
p r o g r a m m e
8.30 Private View of the Exhibition
10.00 Welcome and Opening Remarks
• Rebecca Lyons
10.10 Session 1 | Angelica Kauffman and the Royal Academy of Arts
Chair: Rebecca Lyons
• Annette Wickham — Angelica Kauffman at the Royal Academy: From a Face on the Wall to Painting the Walls
• Bettina Baumgärtel — Angelica Kauffman in Context
• Jane Simpkiss — An Artist among Equals: A Comparative Analysis of Angelica Kauffman’s Self-Portraits with Those of Her Male Contemporaries
11.35 Break
12.00 Session 2 | Performance and Self-Fashioning in 18th-Century London
Chair: Marie Tavinor
• Chi-chi Nwanoku — 18th-Century Musical Prodigies
• Rebecca Cypess — Music and the Self-Fashioning of Angelica Kauffman
• Emma Barker — Figuring the Sibyl: Angelica Kauffman and the Image of Female Genius
1.25 Lunch Break
2.40 Session 3 | The International Business of Art
Chair: Sarah Victoria Turner
• Yuriko Jackall and Ellen Hanspach-Bernal — The Connections between Style, Reputation, and Business Acumen
• Rosalind Polly Blakesley — Kauffman in the Reign of Catherine the Great
• Wendy Wassyng Roworth — An Enterprising Artist: Angelica Kauffman and the Business of Art
4.10 Break
4.30 Artist Talk / In-Conversation
• Griselda Pollock and Sutapa Biswas
5.30 Concluding Remarks
• Sarah Victoria Turner
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Note (added 23 May 2024) — The posting was updated to include programme details.
London Art Week 2024
From the press release for London Art Week, with selected highlights including the following:
British Women Artists, 1750–1950
Karen Taylor Fine Art, London Art Week, 28 June — 5 July 2024
Penelope Cawardine (1729–1804), Portrait of a Lady Looking in a Mirror, black and red chalk on laid paper, oval 15.3 × 11.5 cm. More information is available here»
Karen Taylor Fine Art’s exhibition British Women Artists, 1750–1950 coincides with the exhibition of the Tate Britain’s Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920. It will include a number of scientific works by Sarah Stone and others; portraiture, which provided the livelihood for many female artists from the 18th century to Laura Knight; and landscapes from a wide range of female artists.
Karen Taylor is a private dealer in British and topographical art, principally works on paper, with a particular interest in works of historic and geographical importance and British women artists. She works by appointment in London and is proud to include major institutions in the USA, UK, and Europe amongst her regular customers. Karen worked in the British drawings department at Sotheby’s and after 10 years moved to Spink, where she ran the picture department. In 1999, she established Karen Taylor Fine Art, and regularly exhibits at fairs in London and holds exhibitions during London Art Week.
The related catalogue includes an introduction by Paris Spies-Gans.
Exhibition | Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920
From the press release for the exhibition:
Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920
Tate Britain, London, 16 May — 13 October 2024
Tate Britain presents Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920. This ambitious group show charts women’s road to being recognised as professional artists, a 400-year journey that paved the way for future generations and established what it meant to be a woman in the British art world. The exhibition covers the period in which women were visibly working as professional artists, but went against societal expectations to do so.
Featuring over 100 artists, the exhibition celebrates well-known names such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Gwen John, alongside many others who are only now being rediscovered. Their careers were as varied as the works they produced. Some prevailed over genres deemed suitable for women like watercolour landscapes and domestic scenes. Others dared to take on subjects dominated by men like battle scenes and the nude, or campaigned for equal access to training and membership of professional institutions. Tate Britain will showcase over 200 works, including oil painting, watercolour, pastel, sculpture, photography, and ‘needlepainting’ to tell the story of these trailblazing artists.
Now You See Us begins at the Tudor court with Levina Teerlinc, many of whose miniatures are brought together for the first time in four decades, and Esther Inglis, whose manuscripts contain Britain’s earliest known self-portraits by a woman artist. The exhibition then looks to the 17th century. Focus is given to one of art history’s most celebrated women artists: Artemisia Gentileschi, who created major works in London at the court of Charles I, including the recently rediscovered Susanna and the Elders 1638–40, on loan from the Royal Collection for the very first time. The exhibition also looks to women such as Mary Beale, Joan Carlile, and Maria Verelst who broke new ground as professional portrait painters in oil.
Maria Cosway, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire as Cynthia from Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’, 1781–82, oil on canvas (The Devonshire Collection).
In the 18th century, women took part in Britain’s first public art exhibitions; these artists included overlooked figures such as Katherine Read and Mary Black; the sculptor Anne Seymour Damer; and Margaret Sarah Carpenter, a leading figure in her day but little heard of now. The show looks at Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, the only women included among the Founder Members of the Royal Academy of Arts; it took 160 years for membership to be granted to another woman. Women artists of this era are often dismissed as amateurs pursuing ‘feminine’ occupations like watercolour and flower painting, but many worked in these genres professionally: needlewoman Mary Linwood, whose gallery was a major tourist attraction; miniaturist Sarah Biffin, who painted with her mouth, having been born without arms and legs; and Augusta Withers, a botanical illustrator employed by the Horticultural Society.
The Victorian period saw a vast expansion in public exhibition venues. Now You See Us showcases major works by critically appraised artists of this period, including Elizabeth Butler (née Thompson)’s monumental The Roll Call 1874 (Butler’s work prompted critic John Ruskin to retract his statement that “no women could paint”), and nudes by Henrietta Rae and Annie Swynnerton, which sparked both debate and celebration. The exhibition will also look at women’s connection to activism, including Florence Claxton’s satirical ‘Woman’s Work’: A Medley 1861, which will be on public display for the first time since it was painted; and an exploration of the life of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, an early member of the Society of Female Artists who is credited with the campaign for women to be admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. On show will be the student work of women finally admitted to art schools, as well as their petitions for equal access to life drawing classes.
The exhibition ends in the early 20th century with women’s suffrage and the First World War. Women artists like Gwen John, Vanessa Bell and Helen Saunders played an important role in the emergence of modernism, abstraction and vorticism, but others, such as Anna Airy, who also worked as a war artist, continued to excel in conventional traditions. The final artists in the show, Laura Knight and Ethel Walker, offer powerful examples of ambitious, independent, confident professionals who achieved critical acclaim and—finally—membership of the Royal Academy.
The exhibition guide is available here»
Tabitha Barber, Tim Batchelor, Carol Jacobi, eds., Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920 (London: Tate Publishing, 2024), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-1849769259, £40.
Conference | The First Public Museums, 18th–19th Centuries
From ArtHist.net:
Publics of the First Public Museums: II. Literary Discourses, 18th–19th Centuries
Durham University, 23–24 May 2024
Organized by Carla Mazzarelli and Stefano Cracolici
The workshop Publics of the First Public Museums (18th and 19th Centuries), II. Literary Discourses is an integral part of the research project Visibility Reclaimed: Experiencing Rome’s First Public Museums (1733–1870), An Analysis of Public Audiences in a Transnational Perspective (SNSF 100016_212922). The second of three encounters, this workshop delves into the examination of literary discourses vital to understanding the experiences of early museum-goers. Travel literature has long represented a privileged source for investigating the origins of the first public museums and the practices of access to public and private collections in Europe. However, in the light of recent studies aimed at deepening the material history of the museum and the encounter of the public with the institutions, these sources deserve a closer scrutiny in both methodological and critical terms. Following the inaugural Rome session that focused on institutional sources, the Durham workshop turns its gaze towards the rich literary narratives with the aim of analysing them also in a comparative perspective with the primary sources. As museums sought to define and engage their public, literature often became both a mirror and a mould, reflecting and shaping societal perceptions. With a spotlight on interdisciplinary and transnational approaches, the Durham workshop calls for a deeper probe into the visual and material realms of museums, emphasizing the interplay between literary discourses and artworks, collections, display, space, audiences ‘narrated’ in the museum and the evolving institutional norms of the 18th and 19th centuries. Information and streaming on request: visibilityreclaimed@gmail.com.
Principal investigator
Carla Mazzarelli, Università della Svizzera italiana, Accademia di architettura di Mendrisio, Istituto di storia e teoria dell’arte e dell’architettura
Project Partners
Giovanna Capitelli, Università Roma Tre
Stefano Cracolici, Durham University
David García Cueto, Museo del Prado
Christoph Frank Università della Svizzera Italiana
Daniela Mondini, Università della Svizzera Italiana
Chiara Piva, Sapienza Università di Roma
Organising Secretary
Gaetano Cascino (Università della Svizzera italiana)
Lucia Rossi (Università della Svizzera italiana)
t h u r s d a y , 2 3 ma y
9.00 Welcome by Ita MacCarthy (Durham University, Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Director)
9.15 1 | Methodological Reflections
This session serves as an introduction to the workshop, providing a shared reflection on the current state of research and the future prospects. It will focus on the comparative, interdisciplinary, and intermedial analysis of literatures within the field of museum studies.
Chair: Christoph Frank (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Carla Mazzarelli (Università della Svizzera italiana) — Letterature e pubblici del Museo: fonti o modelli?
• Stefano Cracolici (Durham University) — Musei d’Arcadia
• Marco Maggi (Università della Svizzera italiana) — ‘Tutta l’arte del buon governo trastullando imparare in un passeggio’: A Literary Rearrangement of the Duke of Savoy’s Great Gallery
11.15 2 | Museums at Hand
This session will analyse literary genres for museum visitors, like guidebooks, and the role of periodicals in broadening museum audience engagement. Discussions will cover the evolution of these texts and new reading approaches introduced by Digital Humanities.
Chair: Giovanna Capitelli (Università Roma Tre)
• Damiano Delle Fave (Sapienza Università di Roma) — Pubblici dei musei a Roma nelle guide dell’Ottocento
• Gaetano Cascino (Università della Svizzera italiana) — ‘I Romani non frequentano le gallerie di Roma’: discussioni e stereotipi sui visitatori dei musei di Roma nella stampa di secondo Ottocento
• Pietro Costantini (Università di Teramo) — Viaggio in Abruzzo: Vincenzo Bindi e I Monumenti storici ed artistici degli Abruzzi
12.30 Keynote Address
• Carole Paul (University of California, Santa Barbara) — The Museum Going Public in 18th-Century Italy
13.15 Lunch Break
14.15 3 | Museums on the Beaten Track
This session focuses on museum experiences in travel literature, including correspondence, diaries, and travel accounts. Discussions will specifically examine the unique perspectives of visitor-narrators and how published literary accounts of museum visits compare or contrast with unpublished sources.
Chair: Mauro Vincenzo Fontana (Università Roma Tre)
• Rosa Maria Giusto (Napoli, CNR) — La ‘città-museo’ e i resoconti dei viaggiatori: le Notizie di Roma scritte dal Sig.re Aless.o Galilei
• Luca Piccoli (Università della Svizzera italiana) — Reise nach Italien dell’architetto Simon-Louis Du Ry: resoconti pubblici e privati sui musei in Italia a confronto
• Ludovica Scalzo (Università Roma Tre) — ‘The torch, like Promethean fire, makes every statue live’: visite a lume di fiaccola nei musei romani dai resoconti di viaggio della prima metà dell’Ottocento
15.30 Coffee Break
15.45 4 | Varieties of Sightseeing
This session explores the variety of visiting spaces, perspectives, and geographies in the 18th and 19th centuries, including museums, monuments, private palaces, and studios. Discussions will focus on what these diverse viewpoints reveal about sociocultural dynamics.
Chair: David García Cueto (Museo Nacional del Prado)
• Daniel Crespo-Delgado (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) — Los monumentos y las colecciones de arte en la literatura de viajes española (y por España) de la Ilustración
• Victoria Arzhaeva (EPHE-PSL, laboratoire Histara) — Les pensionnaires russes au Vatican: l’expérience muséale à travers la correspondence artistique et les journaux intimes du XIXe siècle
• Michele Amedei (Università di Pisa) — ‘The Studio was a monument of his intelligent taste and æsthetic
culture’: l’atelier dell’artista nei resoconti e diari di viaggio di visitatori nordamericani nella Toscana dell’Ottocento
17.00 Keynote Address
Christoph Frank (Università della Svizzera italiana) — In the Shadow of the Americas: The Humboldts and Schinkel in the Rome of the Early 1800s
f r i d a y , 2 4 m a y
9.00 5 | Literary Landscapes
This session aims to reflect on how literature provides a multifaceted view of the museum experience, extending the analysis to landscape traversal. It will consider the poetic charm of narrative evocations that capture the emotions of a setting and the ekphrastic descriptions that articulate artworks in written words.
Chair: Ita MacCarthy (Durham University)
• Cecilia Paolini (Università di Teramo) — Il Controcanto di Clio: George Sand e l’inascoltata interpretazione del paesaggio italiano tra spazio barocco e romanticismo progressista
• Elizaveta Antashyan (Sapienza Università di Roma) — ‘A Walk through the Hermitage’: Russia’s First Public Museum and Its Reflections in Literature during the Reign of Alexander II (1855–1881)
10.00 6 | Museum Tales
This session is dedicated to literary texts that transform museum visits into narratives. It explores how notions of time and space during such visits compare with the temporal dynamics of literary narration and how the perception of the visited places differs from travel accounts.
Chair: Sara Garau (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Lucia Rossi (Università della Svizzera italiana) — Il ‘Museo di Roma’ tra esperienza, ricordo e costruzione narrativa: I Miei Ricordi e le Lettere di Massimo d’Azeglio
• Meghan Freeman (Yale University) — The Intimacies of Art Travel in Henry James
• Corinne Pontillo (Università di Catania) — ‘S’arrestò davanti alla Gioconda’: visitare il Museo del Louvre attraverso la letteratura
11.15 Coffee Break
11.30 7 | Sensory Visits
This session explores how the concept of the museum as a space to ‘read’ differs from its traditional perception as a space to ‘visit’. It will examine, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the implications of this distinction in literary and museological discourses, with a special focus on the sensory dimension of navigating through texts and the museum.
Chair: Marco Maggi (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Isabelle Pichet (UQTR, Trois Rivières) and Dorit Kluge (VICTORIA | International University, Berlin) — Experiencing 18th-Century Art Exhibitions in Paris and Dresden: A Sensory Interplay between Exhibition and Text
• Sofia Bollini (Università Luigi Vanvitelli, Napoli / Università della Svizzera Italiana) — Il preparato anatomico come oggetto museale e letterario nella cultura tardottocentesca
• Laura Stefanescu (Villa I Tatti, Harvard University) — Vernon Lee’s Gallery Diaries: An Aesthetic Bodily Experience of Italian Museums in the Early 20th Century
12.30 Discussion and Conclusion
Exhibition | Fanciful Figures
Soane office hand, RA Lecture Drawing of the Portico of Holkham Hall, Norfolk, 1806–19
(London: Sir John Soane’s Museum 17/1/20)Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Museum)
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Now on view at Sir John Soane’s Museum:
Fanciful Figures
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, 22 March — 9 June 2024
Fanciful Figures turns visitors’ attention to ‘staffage’, the small human and animal figures in architectural drawings, which became increasingly popular during the eighteenth century. Drawing on the drafting practices of past and present, the exhibition illustrates staffage’s ability to animate architects’ visions, both for built projects and unrealised designs.
The Georgians placed these figures—whether beautifully dressed, sociable, or industrious—into their drawings to animate, add intrigue, and enhance the aspirational appeal of their designs. They also played, and continue to play, an important role in indicating the scale and function of architectural elements and drawing attention to the special features of designs. Just as architects today use staffage to help prospective buyers imagine a life in and around new developments, these historic scenes were created to market new possibilities to audiences. They have, therefore, taken on a new significance as a means of signalling shifts in style, demographics, work, and culture. Between the city traders and happy families, street-side boxing matches and children riding in dog-carts, the figures celebrated in this exhibition help piece together a vibrant picture.
The exhibition draws largely from the Museum’s own collection, including a very early instance of staffage by figure artist Leonard Knyff from 1695. This is shown alongside works by Soane’s favourite draughtsman Joseph Gandy and a series of never-before-seen prints by Benedict Van Assen, both pioneers in this practice.
A specially commissioned film, on display in the Museum’s Foyle Space, explores the representation of figures and communities in contemporary architectural drawing, illustrating the roles that these figures play in reflecting the values, priorities, and aspirations of architects and their projects. The film discusses this subject with four prominent architectural practices: Nimtim, Muf, Office S&M, and OMMX. At the cutting edge of their field, these architects question who is represented in architectural designs and what the impact of this representation of our shared spaces has on how we live.
Enfilade 
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